


00:00:00

by verbrogue



Series: (Bat) Family Moments [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (didn't expect that did you?), (not relevant to plot but important to me), (via Catherine Todd), Asthmatic Jason Todd, Autistic Bruce Wayne, Batman: A Death in the Family, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Catholic Jason Todd, Gen, Jason Todd is Robin, Jewish Bruce Wayne, Latino Jason Todd, POV Bruce Wayne, POV Third Person, Past Drug Use, Protective Bruce Wayne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21768550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbrogue/pseuds/verbrogue
Summary: he needs to keep searching, turning debris and stone, rolling bars from walls and throwing pieces off the ground; he no longer knows what he is speaking, his mouth simply forms the shapes and sound escapes it --- Jason, jay, Jase, jaybird, Jaylad, baby, sweetheart,robin.It is a world of gods and magic, a world where all his hard-won logic is defied every night,and his son still dies.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Series: (Bat) Family Moments [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1568851
Comments: 6
Kudos: 127





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**Author's Note:**

> We all know what this is. This is going to hurt. Alt: title for this is "It's alright, child".  
> Also, I recommend listening to Ékó, by Coldplay, while reading this. Feels-o-meter goes up tenfold.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy this small piece of work!
> 
> Oh, and this fic contains some descriptions of a child dying, so if you feel in any form triggered by that content, please read it with caution.

he is unaware of the bomb until the building is gone in a flash of light and ruptous noise, earth-shaking beneath his feet; but heavy boots continue to rush across cracked stone and sand, and if anything they are motivated to run faster. emotion breaks through the barrier of training and mind and he screams for his son. despair colors the baritone cracks the name in two --- _the boy’s real name_ because there is nothing that matters more right now. damn his secret, his fortune, his own life. he needs to find his lad.

so he searches, continues to call and tries to listen amidst the chaos akin to a no man’s land --- a sign, is all that he asks. perhaps now an angel will descend and tell him Jason has been saved, instead, a lamb was immolated and bled the earth and his atonement is done for, now they can return home and be a family again. but none of that happens, and bruce keeps searching. he needs to keep searching, turning debris and stone, rolling bars from walls and throwing pieces off the ground; he no longer knows what he is speaking, his mouth simply forms the shapes and sound escapes it --- _Jason, jay, Jase, jaybird, jaylad, baby, sweetheart, **robin.**_

it is important to keep calling, to let him know help is on the way.

there. a sign. a small rattle comes from under a piece of wall and cement. he runs, he pushes, he screams. all this training is no good if he can’t stop the people who mean the most to him from getting hurt; but that rattling is enough to motivate him --- don’t stop, old man --- it’s what it tells him, so bruce pushes the wall of his son. immediately after, the sight brings him to his knees. were it not for the dirty yellow cape and the shape of those dark curls, bruce wouldn’t know his boy from any other corpse, but he does. it is Jason, it is his boy. 

the tiny movement of his broken chest alerts bruce back into movement. jay needs help, now. the more he catalogs every hurt (commits it to memory, the darker part of him admits, so he can later find the joker and give him the same. it will be justice then, for Jason, for barbara, for everyone. and if death comes from it, nobody will be sad from it) the more his heart fills with dread. his boy’s lungs keep struggling, his little legs bent and unmoving, his hands broken and bleeding, his head… the curve of his skull is wrong, everything is so wrong. this cannot be his Jason. his jay is a force of nature second only to dick, smiling and eager and brash and never stopping (not even when he is reading. at very least dick had his hyperactivity to excuse and explain his incessant movement, jay does it because he enjoys the freedom of it, the high ceilings of the manor and open roofs of the city).

a gurgle, blood-stained lips shape a name. _bruce, bruce, bruce, **dad.**_ the crusader unlatches his cape and tucks his boy in it the best he can --- every movement must hurt him _so much,_ and bruce cannot hurt him anymore. taking the chance to measure his pulse and breathing, his mind comes to a conclusion his heart refuses to listen to. the batwing won’t be fast enough, and if it is, there is a great distance between the magdala valley and the closest hospital.

his boy is fading too fast, every rattle of those poor lungs (and bruce remembers how hard it was, the first few months, to make Jason quit the smoking habit that he had picked on the streets, to convince him that the medication and the inhalers were to help him, no they were not addictive. bruce remembers the only attack jay’s ever had on the field, how his tiny chest pushed for air, back arching against bruce’s own chest, his blue lips, but Bruce can’t recall how fast he drove to Leslie that night. but the weight of the emergency inhaler isn’t comforting now, it is useless. _he is useless_ ) can be the last.

his brain screams, but he could care less as he takes his precious little one in his arms, prays in English and Yiddish and even _the Spanish ones_ Jason has taught him; hopes that behind the curtain of pain, his jaybird can feel the comfort of being held, of bruce’s lips over his forehead, his hair, but those blue eyes are so far away, so clouded with unbearable pain. as long as his chest moves, though, bruce keeps hoping and praying. there is nothing else to do, anyways. _**he is useless.**_

later he will piece the puzzle together; become the detective he prides himself to be. later, he will understand what happened in this valley, why Jason came here at all, where sheila was in all this, joker’s involvement in detail… but not now. now his boy chokes in his own blood and on smoke, coughs up red that stains his cheeks and projects it onto the symbol on bruce’s chest. couldn’t be more fitting, but now he is struggling to draw breath in.

**_no no no._ **

he needs to breathe. bruce adjusts his hold, as he would to a newborn (he hasn’t had the opportunity to hold his boys that young, but it is impressive how naturally the movement comes --- illogical, but this is no place for logic), and tries to clear Jason's airway but --- _like a puppet with his strings cut,_ the little body in his arms becomes lax. one moment he was fighting and the next he is gone, eyes still open under the frayed mask, **but his heart is still.**

_bruce finally allows himself to cry._


End file.
